I know it's a kids show, but...(unmarked spoilers for the season finale) · 3:22am Nov 29th, 2015
So I had a lot of issues with today's episode. Now, every episode has its flaws, and I'm not saying that today's episode's so bad I'm going to stop watching the show and join some other fandom (I hear Donald Trump's going places), but I don't think I've ever enjoyed an episode of Friendship is Magic less than the Cutie Remark.
I liked the ending. Starlight Glimmer's redemption seemed surprisingly well spread and wasn't as rushed as some others we've seen before. The song was fine, though admittedly forgettable.
Seeing Twilight and Spike take so long to figure how things worked was frustrating, especially when we were well into the second part, but I let it slide. Maybe the targeted demographic wouldn't understand everything as quickly.
I had mixed feelings about the moral, though that could be because of how many morals you could potentially find. For instance, I really liked what Starlight learned, that it's never too late to make friends and that you're supposed to work with your friends when things beyond your control threaten to tear your friendship apart. The whole thing about the butterfly effect though, that small actions have huge consequences, eh...
Look, I guess that's supposed to mean to be careful with your actions, but hindsight is 20/20, and it's impossible to predict what consequences taking the second to last scone at Starbucks will have. That kind of lesson is for time travelers and not exactly applicable to daily life. Still, a pretty trival gripe, especially since that's supposed to take a backseat to the importance of friendship.
Then there's Starlight being blind to the importance of Twilight's friendship with the Mane 6. Seriously. Okay, maybe Our Town is so isolated that Starlight never heard of Nightmare Moon or Discord or Tirek or the Crystal Empire or maybe Twilight and her friends keep their involvement classified, except for taking care of Discord. Fine, Starlight Glimmer doesn't know. I do though, and I was grinding my teeth every time she dismissed Twilight's insistence. And it's not easy to enjoy television with ground up teeth.
I also have a thing against apocalyptic scenarios in Equestria. Not a huge fan of them. Don't really care about Fallout: Equestria. Didn't really enjoy the first part of the season 2 opening. It's more of a personal preference than any real issue with the show's writing.
My biggest issue with the episode, and perhaps the pettiest, however, is the whole time travel aspect. Now feel free to call me out for reading too deeply into a show about magical ponies, but why were there so many variations of the present when the biggest change in the past was the same? If Twilight and her friends never got together, they wouldn't had been able to find the Elements of Harmony, so no one could've been able to stop Nightmare Moon. The only timeline that should have been available was the one with Nightmare Moon in control.
I mean, I guess you could argue that events we didn't see led to Nightmare Moon's defeat that would allow the other presents, but I'm just going to be a big fat hypocrite and say you're digging in too deeply.
But yeah, those are my feelings about the finale. In all honesty, I found it a disappointing end to an amazing season.
I was slightly confused about the multiple bad futures myself. Zecora's little hand-wave was a far from satisfying explanation. I'm a fan of the whole butterfly effect idea, but I like to at least see some line of logic around the changes.
Though I suppose at least one of those futures might be explained by Rainbow Dash being dead? The one where Twilight accidentally froze her instead of Starlight, I mean? Dang if I know how. Whatever though, when it comes to time travel in cartoons it's often easier to just accept what they put out than try to over analyze it. This ain't exactly Doctor Who with fifty years to perfect (and break and change and forget and rewrite and tweak) the rules.
Honestly, Starlight's redemption is fine with me, it's kinda the lack of consequences that pushes my buttons. She was basically committing treason by attacking and subverting Twilight at every turn. And she gets to be Twilight's new student and friends with the Mane Six. I would see her more in the same light as post-reform Discord with it being a rather rocky road to gain trust and friendship with the others. Twilight acting as part teacher part parole officer and helping Starlight reintegrate with society.
Maybe that's a bit heavy for a show usually targeted to young girls, but most everyone except Fluttershy treated Discord like that.
I'm not really disappointed in the episode, however. I found it an enjoyable forty-some minutes that left me wanting more. I wanted to see more about how the changes to the past had caused these bleak futures! I wanted to know more about the futures themselves and explore them! Guess that's what fanworks can be for, but still!
What I'm really glad for is finally getting an answer to the question "if the Rainboom didn't happen, what would happen to the Mane Six?". I think it's interesting that in all the bad futures, they still had the same cutie marks. Could that mean it's set from birth and you can't change what you get, just the circumstances around it? Because that could be interesting to consider for folks making AU works or planning time travel stories of their own.
3576613
My disappointment with the episode most stems from my inability to concentrate on the episode itself. I kept thinking about how confusing the multiple presents were, and before I knew it, episode over.
Celestia can use Elements - she could free herself from the Moon, defeat NN and fail to stop Sombra; other villan(s) could beat Nightmare Night and take her place; other ponies could defeat NN as Elements but were too weak (or dead) and someone else took over. Also: time-y wimey.
3582262
Well, I'm just going to be super honest to myself and say you're digging in too deeply.